J, THE .,. / .,---- .w:: IÞ :: ...:: rm I\\\\\ .. w. -- "'\ ; 0 0 . . 0 , . ',,# ". THE. TALI( OF THE TOWN Notes and Comment B AWDY NOTE: In one of the libra- ries in Boston there is a sign on the wall-Low CONVERSATION PERMITTED. I T always gives us a start to see a lady fall down in the street. W e can see a man fall down and, unless he happens to hurt himself, the incident is merely comic. But when a lady goes down she seems to go down to stay, and there comes over us the same feeling of fright we experience seeing a horse go down. "She's down!" we cry, crazily; and in the emergency our first mad impulse is to sit on her head while somebody unhooks her. W E seem to be the person singled out by everybody as the perfect person to .w horn to interpret lepeal. The sàme hordes who last spring were eXplaining to us the distinction between light beer and dark beer are now trot- ting along beside us clarifying beverage control. After more than a week of it we are worn down rather fine. The interpreters range all the way from frantic optimists who see blue skies in every bottle of champagne to gloomy prophets who find repeal simply ridicu- lous and who say that it will merely serve to raise the price of drinks and drive nice places out of business. We are offering a case of rare old American milk of magnesia to the subscriber, or friend, who has no opinion whatsoever about control. Our own feeling in the matter is that Americans are a spirit- ed, ingenious people: they managed to sol ve prohibition, and if they did that they can solve repeal. H OW long it will take us to adjust to frank, open-faced dining, with every table visible from the street, is hard to forecast. Fifteen years of Tony's have made us an iron-bellied mole: our character as well as our con- stitution may not ad just immediately to the new scene. Thanks to speak- easy partitions, dining has come to be as private a function as taking a bath; and we are going to feel naked sitting right out there in the middle of a room w here total strangers can see us eat. Repeal is unquestionably going to let a lot of sunlight into our life, and natu- rally we won't submit to that without a struggle. T HE effect of repeal on a place like Schrafft's is something to worry about. Schrafft's is one of the few places in town that can prove they have been serving more food than drinks during the past year. Now that legal- ization has taken place, will one be able to get a Martini along with coleslaw, lamb croquettes, and fresh green peas? And if so, who at Schrafft's is going to mix the Martini? A hostess? And ( will she be able to resist that little dab of whipped cream on top? W HETHER by accident or design, the speakeasy's dim interior satis- fied the most insistent need of a trou- bled period: the need for escape. E very- body has been escaping, from something into something. City people, fearful of collapse, have been escaping into the country; literary people, seeing nothing in the future, have been escaping into the past, writing books of reminiscence at the age of thirty; businessmen have been escaping into the arts, and artists into business; and everybody has been slinking away from nasty old Life into the warm, comforting back room of the wine- merchant. If we were man- ager of the Waldorf, we would attempt to make ourself a handsome fortune during the next few months by catering to a nostalgic populace: we would turn out most of the lights in the Sert Room, pain t phony palms on the walls, instal] stiff-back booths, and dig a small un- derground entrance from a grilled gate h n =. r '11 ...... on Forty-ninth Street. We would do this simply as a business proposition, on the theory that for every Charles Han- son Towne in New York there are twenty Yale men of the class of 1932. ^ S for the rule against standing up n. to a bar to drink, this could be cir- cumvented by building a low bar, the height of an ordinary table, and sinking the bartender behind it in a pit, so that just the right amount of him would show over the top. F or that matter, both drinkers and bartender could, in the event of a raid, be raised up or down at will, like a Roxy organ. O UR interest in the new radio type- writer, which receives police mes- sages and jots them down unassisted, is slight. What would kindle our at- tention would be a night-vigilant bed- side telepathic typewriter which, at three in the morning, would magically receive from us a few scattered notes, or even a quatrain, without obliging us